Hello all,
I am a Harvard student. I know that college applications are coming up and I am more than happy to answer any questions and help you guys out!
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Any Harvard students/parent/alum/staff is also welcome to answer questions.
What was your GPA in high school?
How/What did you write your essays on? [if you are comfortable with sharing 
]
What was one thing you did in high school that seemed to complement your application and made it stand out?
Does Harvard send out any material about Harvard to prospective students (assuming they want to target them)? My S received a nice booklet (almost 100 pages) from Yale recently. He’s a rising senior with excellent grades.
^^ @Dataminer: It’s called marketing and Harvard and Yale do it to the max:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/17/dear-elite-colleges-please-stop-recruiting-students-like-me-if-you-know-we-wont-get-in/?utm_term=.e954ccf60ddd
If Yale sends out 80,000 brochures to students, you should assume Harvard sends out a similar amount. Your son (and you) should look through those fancy brochures with skepticism, as if you received the same marketing campaign from Coke and Pepsi enticing you to try their band. Receiving a brochure is no indication of your child’s actual chances, which in the scheme of things, is very low (no matter what their actual stats).
Although I have to say, I don’t remember Harvard’s materials. I do remember the Yale book - it was quite nice. 
It still didn’t make me apply.
I agree. I believe Harvard sends out far fewer mailings than Yale and Stanford, based on what our children have received. I counted one year, and the ratio was about 1:5 for Harvard:Yale and 1:10 for Harvard:Stanford. I do think Harvard sends a lot of targeted mailings to rural and first-gen students as well as a lot of information about financial aid to students they think might not know about HFAI.
My highschool GPA was 4.0/4.0. As for essays and extracurriculars, I think this website can give you a lot of information.
https://www.thecrimson.com/topic/sponsored-successful-harvard-essays-2018/
My daughter has an outside scholarship (a few hundred, one time) that can be used on any tuition of music class/lesson or music organization/club fee. Is there any music organization or club that charges a fee? Thanks.
Is a cheerleader considered to be an athlete, or having any advantage at all if they want to continue cheerleading at Harvard?
Whether one considers it athletics or a general EC does not matter - it’s not a recruited sport. I’m not saying it’s a good or bad EC, but recruited athletes are part of a separate admissions pool for all intents and purposes. Those applicants are only competing with others of the same sex/sport/position. A non-recruited varsity QB or a cheerleader or a first violinist are all comparable if all other things were equal, which they never are.
No.
Does Harvard use a weighted or unweighted GPA? (At my kid’s private school, no one has an unweighted 4.0.)
^^ https://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2017-18.pdf. If you look at Harvard’s latest Common Data Set (CDS), C11 data points, accepted student’s grades are reported on a 1-4 GPA scale. So, it’s a reasonable assumption that Harvard uses an UNWEIGHTED scale when reporting data. That also probably means, if accepted, Harvard will convert your kid’s weighted score to an an unweighted score. How they do that is open to interpretation. Admissions may use a conversion chart. Or, they may use only the core academic classes of Math, English, Social Studies, Science and Foreign Language and not count other classes such as Physical Education, art, music, drama, heath which tend to boost a student’s GPA. Whatever way Harvard does it, they have not divulged how those calculations are made – both during the admissions process and afterwards when reporting data to the CDS.
What did you write in your essays?
What are classes like in Harvard?
Do you know any transfer students in Harvard–what is he/she like?
Unweighted. A weighted GPA is virtually meaningless outside of the HS as there is no common weighting rubric employed by US high schools.
Interesting. If unweighted on a 4.0 scale, then I’m not clear on how the average admitted student’s GPA is 4.04.
My kid’s unweighted GPA is 3.94 (on the core classes), and she’s first in her class at a super-competitive private school. I understand how Harvard converts is out of her control, but knowing that information would help her decide whether to use her one early-action at Harvard, which remains her top choice. (She’s got a 1590 SAT, and three 800s on SAT II tests in chem, bio, and math. No superscoring needed, as she only sat once for each exam.). Again, the issue is where to use her one early action to roll the dice/play the lottery as an unhooked applicant.
AFAIK, that statistic has not been provided by Harvard. Whenever I have seen this number, it has been from a secondary source like prepscholar.
Some high schools give A+ grades with a 4.3 conversion. So my guess is that wherever the 4.04 GPA came from used that 4.3.
@pappernich: If Harvard is your daughter’s first choice school, then she should apply SCEA, as acceptance rates in the RD round are abysmal.
FWIW: GPA and test scores are NOT the most important factor in being accepted to HYPSM et al. Yes, everyone has to have good grades and test scores – and your daughter does – but please read this article to see what other “soft factors” come into play: https://www.bostonmagazine.com/2006/05/15/keys-to-the-kingdom/
Keep in mind that applications to Harvard have doubled since the above article was written, but Harvard still accepts a target class of about 1660 students. Best of luck to your daughter!
The 2003 article is an interesting read—thanks. I think McGrath may still be there.
^^ @pappernich: Yes, Ms. McGrath is still a member of the Admissions Committee. In addition, Ms. McGrath’s husband, Harry R. Lewis, who is the dean of Harvard’s Computer Science Department (having taught both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg) is also a member of the Admissions Committee. As you can see, Harvard’s Full Admissions Committee is comprised of a very SMALL number of long-term Harvard faculty and Admissions staff who are determined to look for the best and brightest students applying to the school in any given year.